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District 214 Board seats new members, elects new officers

The High School District 214 Board of Education on April 27 seated four recently elected board members and elected a new board president and vice president.

Mark Hineman, Mildred (Millie) Palmer, Lenny Walker and Todd Younger were sworn in April 27 by Associate Judge Hyman I. Riebman of the Cook County Circuit Court's Third Municipal District. Hineman and Younger ran as incumbents in the April 2017 election. All four will serve four-year terms.

At the April 27 meeting, the Board of Education also elected Younger president and Dan Petro vice-president, both for one-year terms.

A longtime Mount Prospect resident, Hineman has served as a District 214 Board Member since 2009. He has worked diligently with District leaders to ensure the District remains one of the most progressive in the nation and maintains fiscal responsibility. Hineman, who works as a consulting engineer at Engineering Systems Inc., has also served as the treasurer for the local ASM chapter and as a mentor for their annual Materials Camp for high school juniors and seniors in the Chicago area. He and his wife, Jean, have three children, all of whom are Prospect High School graduates.

Palmer, an Arlington Heights resident, practices law as a founding partner in the women-owned law firm, Waltz, Palmer & Dawson, LLC. She and her husband, Russ, have three children who graduated from Rolling Meadows High School and a daughter who is a junior at the school. In 2013, Palmer was awarded the District’s Distinguished Service Award for her commitment to volunteerism at Rolling Meadows, where she has supported students by chaperoning trips, fundraising, coordinating and working school events, and helping create the school’s Interact Club that empowers students to make a global impact.

Petro, an attorney with Petro Law Firm, has been a District 214 Board Member since 2011. He and his wife, Gail, reside in Arlington Heights and have six children, five of whom are graduates of John Hersey High School and one who is a junior at the school. In addition to dedicating his time to District 214, Petro served for 12 years as a board member of Arlington Heights School District 25 and served as a board member for NSSEO.

A longtime Wheeling resident, Walker has helped rebuild Wheeling High School’s PTO. As PTO president, he has worked to provide monetary support for student groups and teachers by re-establishing mini-grants. Walker, a senior executive in the floral industry for more than 30 years, has also served on the board of the school’s Choral League, helping fundraise to provide scholarships to students and reduce participation costs. He received the District’s Distinguished Service Award in 2017 for his volunteerism at Wheeling. He and his wife, Karen, have two daughters who are Wheeling graduates and a son and daughter who are a senior and junior, respectively, at the school.

Younger, an Arlington Heights resident and District 214 alumnus, was first appointed to the District’s Board of Education to fill a vacant board seat in August 2011 and was subsequently elected to a four-year term in April 2013. He served as vice-president of the Board for two years beginning in 2015. He grew up in Mount Prospect and graduated from John Hersey High School in 1982. Younger is active in the Chicago area as Senior Vice President for Wintrust Bank, where he provides guidance and banking services to middle-market companies. He and his wife, Kathy, have a son and daughter who both graduated from Prospect High School in 2013 and 2016, respectively.